Explore American Education Bias: Test Your Knowledge of Yuri Gagarin

[Phrak]

I don't think that knowing about the achievements of Yuri Gagarin or John Glenn are "trivia".

This is entirely different! The OP question was about a name. What can you tell me about the man Yuri Gararin or John Glenn, other than he was the first to do this or that.

 

[Lisa!]

I'm not American, therefor I don't have the right to vote here!:zzz:

 

[OmCheeto]

This is entirely different! The OP question was about a name. What can you tell me about the man Yuri Gararin or John Glenn, other than he was the first to do this or that.

Yes, the post title states "Bias".

I think this points out more a tendency of the way people have a difficulty with remembering foreign names than domestic names.

One of my coworkers, a recent(14 years ) Slavic emigre to America, took almost a year to remember the name of the new president of our company. Everyone else recognized it by day two. I could almost hear the voices in the other workers heads; "Earth to Svetlana! Why is it so hard to remember a name like Bob Johnson?"

Yuri Gagarin has no common counterpart in anglicized names or culture. It would therefore have to be remembered as a standalone set of alien sounds and symbols. (Except for possibly the Yuri portion: Geller of spoon bending fame, and Zhivago of course)

I'm sure many people probably remember my not even trying to pretend to know the president of Iran's name: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1830683&highlight=Ahmadjeblahblah#post1830683", Ahmadjewhatever, etc.

It wasn't until AhmedEzz referred to him several times as "Nejad", and my Armenian friend explained the "din" portion of his name, that I was finally able to remember how to even come close to spelling his name without having to google "Iranian President".

Ahmadinejad. I think.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think the point of the op was made clear here. That is why I posted the newspaper.

My point was that any American can name Neil Armstrong. I thought American propaganda would shun Gagarin. Needless to say, these results are very surprising!

 

[Mk]

Believe it or not I was born quite a while before that series was first shown.

Good, because if you were 6 I'd have to compliment you on your English.

 

[TVP45]

I don't think that knowing about the achievements of Yuri Gagarin or John Glenn are "trivia". The Russian space program was shrouded in secrecy until after the fact, so that was a detriment, but every single US launch that was televised was an "event" at my little back-woods elementary school. The whole student-body would gather along with all of our teachers (and even the janitor and the cook, if they were still in the building) to watch the launch on the B&W (duh! no other kind, then) TV, and quite often our teachers would have some kinds of activities planned for us that tied into the launch.

I knew when I was young that the Earth's atmosphere got thinner and thinner the higher you went in altitude and I idolized test pilots (exemplified publicly by Chuck Yeager) who were brave enough to strap into a glorified little "flying needle" like the X-15, get a ride to the altitude-limits of the capabilities of a B-52, and get dropped off so they could take a trip to "outer space". It ain't trivia if you lived through it, and were expected to learn from it.

Want some more "trivia"? After Sputnik, US school-kids were given banks of aptitude tests and IQ tests to identify potential high-achievers who could be routed into science and technology curricula later, to help the US dominate the space race. My parents were very poor, and my sisters and I had pretty meager "hauls" on Christmas, not unlike many of my friends in that area. However, the year of our first round of evaluations I got a cheap but usable Newtonian telescope for Christmas (the ball-mount was a *****!) and the next year, I got an Edmund's microscope with 3 objectives and a couple of eyepieces. In another year or so, my father managed to scrape up enough money to buy a set of World Book encyclopedias.

Turbo-1,

I think I grew up in about the same kind of setting, although I might be a year or three older. I didn't get evaluated, but my mom got excited about all this science and math stuff that President Eisenhower said we should learn. So, that fall, she got convinced by a door-to-door World Book salesman and bought us kids a set on time (I think it was weekly payments of maybe a $1.15 for three years or something like that). The problem was that the mountain was full of poor adults who had never gotten past about the fifth grade during the depression. When all these neighbors found out we had an Encyclopedia, they started borrowing them and reading all the way through, book by book. So, my sisters and I had a set of World Books that usually included maybe 14 letters of the alphabet. I think "A" was the most popular, so we always hoped our teachers didn't assign anything about John Adams. And, yeah, I got a couple of the science project gifts for Christmas, including the chemsitry set where you could actually make stuff that stunk and blew up!

Thanks for the memory. And, yes, I had pictures of Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield; I think I remember sending something like ten cents of postage stamps as payment for pictures of test pilots and airplanes.

 

[OmCheeto]

It's been three days since I linked to the name of the first person who was shot into space by the Chinese. Does anyone remember the name?

 

[BobG]

It's been three days since I linked to the name of the first person who was shot into space by the Chinese. Does anyone remember the name?

When you're the 241st* person to visit outer space, your name is destined to be nothing more than Chinese trivia. Who was Canada's first astronaut? Who was the first Slovak astronaut? First French astronaut? First Spanish astronaut? First Italian astronaut?

Here's a list of countries' first astronaut: Timeline of space travel by nationality

Edit: * I wouldn't put much stock in him being the 241st in space (it was part of a news article). With nearly 500 people that have visited space, I find it hard to believe that a 2003 launch would put him at only 241.


Interesting trivia: Sergei Krikalev and Alexander Volkov were the first Russian citizens (as opposed to Soviet citizens) in outer space and the first to return to Earth. Alexandr Kaleri and Alexandr Viktorenko were the first Russian citizens launched into outer space. Krikalev and Volkov were already orbiting in the MIR when the Soviet Union broke up.

 

[Carid]

It's been three days since I linked to the name of the first person who was shot into space by the Chinese. Does anyone remember the name?

What's this? You want to know the first person shot in space by the Chinese? They shoot so many, but I didn't know they were doing it in space yet.

 

[Gokul43201]

Krikalev and Volkov were already orbiting in the MIR when the Soviet Union broke up.

Wow! What a view they must have had!

 

[BobG]

This is entirely different! The OP question was about a name. What can you tell me about the man Yuri Gararin or John Glenn, other than he was the first to do this or that.

Their accomplishment was the most interesting thing about their life (although Glenn did have a significant political life after his astronaut days).

Lisa Nowak is more interesting than either, even though her accomplishments are slightly more dubious.

 

[BigDumbWeirdo]

I'm American and I learned who Yuri is in school...
I don't really understand the point of this. In order to demonstrate any appreciable 'american bias' you'd need a whole host of questions, not just a single one.

 

[Phrak]

Their accomplishment was the most interesting thing about their life (although Glenn did have a significant political life after his astronaut days).

Lisa Nowak is more interesting than either, even though her accomplishments are slightly more dubious.

I've always wondered about Glenn. Remember when all the star-struck talking heads hyped the geriatric space mission? I still what to know what Glenn traded for his last junket to orbit. Or was it a happy coincidence, where political clout and and an honest scientific research program just happened to coincide?

 

[theCandyman]

Of course I know! The guy who bends spoons with mind powers, right?

On a side note, he made his flight during a time the US and the Soviet Union were not getting along. In effect, the media didn't make a big deal of him so teachers today don't mention him much themselves. Different story for Armstrong though.